Art Auctions Review · year 2021

Art auctions 2021 review: from a $103 million Picasso to the first multimillion NFT artworks, we present our personal review of the 2021 Art Auctions season, its superstars, successes, bargains and disappointments.

by G. Fernández – theartwolf.com

Overview of the Year

Images: Beeple (Mike Winkelmann): Everydays: the First 5000 Days. © Beeple. Pablo Picasso: Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse), being auctioned at Christie’s. Image via www.christies.com

The great revolution of the art market in 2021, a revolution that goes beyond the art world as evidenced by the fact that it has been chosen as “word of the year” by the Collins dictionary, has undoubtedly been the NFTs. Non-fungible tokens have made it possible to make digital works of art unique (and therefore collectible), opening up a gigantic new market niche that collectors and auction houses have not been slow to detect. Although it was not, as we shall see, the most expensive artwork of 2021, the auction of Beeple’s “Every Day: the First 5000 Days” for $69.3 million in March 2021 represents one of the most important sales in the history of the art market, on a par with or above the Goldschmidt auction in 1958, the sale of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in 1987 or the most recent auction of the “Salvator Mundi” attributed to Leonardo for $450 million.

Beyond the NFTs, the year has been marked, as is evident, by the economic situation resulting from the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. The slow but steady recovery caused in large part by the emergence of vaccines boosted the market and, in the absence of total results to be published shortly by the auction houses, partial results show that this recovery has been reflected in the art market. For example, the results published by Christie’s for the first half of the year surpassed not only those of 2020, but even the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, being the second highest of the last 6 years. According to ArtTactic, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips’ totals for the first half of 2021 represent a 23% increase over 2020. At the individual level, three works sold in 2021 surpassed the highest price achieved for a work of art sold in 2020. Update, December 21: year-end results released by both auction houses confirm the trend observed during the first half of the year. Sotheby’s has reported total sales of $7.3 billion (71% above 2020 and 26% above the ‘pre-pandemic’ 2019), while Christie’s has published a total of $7.1 billion (highest total in last five years)

Also noteworthy is the consolidation of Hong Kong as the third major focus of the art market, along with New York and London, exhibiting strength not only in Asian art (already shown in previous years), but in contemporary art. In March, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Warrior” was auctioned at Christie’s for HK$323.6 million (US$41.7 million), a record for a Western artwork ever auctioned in Asia. However, beyond “established” artists such as Basquiat or Warhol, who continue to garner their most notable sales in New York, Hong Kong has become a vibrant market for younger artists, such as George Condo, Cecily Brown or Adrian Ghenie, whose works are widely coveted by a new generation of younger collectors, fulfilling the prediction released by Sotheby’s earlier this year, in which it noted “a steady influx of new, younger buyers and a radically expanded buyer base with greater cross-category participation“

The Superstars of the Year

Images: Pablo Picasso: Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) © Heirs of Pablo Picasso ·· Sandro Botticelli: Portrait of a Young Man holding a Roundel

Pablo Picasso: Femme assise près d’une fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse)
Painted in 1932
Sold for $103.4 million at Christie’s New York, May 2021
Picasso, always Picasso. This sensual portrait of Marie-Thérèse, painted in Picasso’s “magical year” of 1932, is a typical example of Picasso’s sensual style of the first half of the 1930s, although it is not a masterpiece comparable to “Le Rêve” or “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust“. Anyways, it was the most expensive artwork sold in 2021, and its sale represented the first time an artwork broke the $100 million mark at auction since spring 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: In this case
Painted in 1983
Sold for $93.1 million at Christie’s New York, May 2021
This painting belongs to the same series of “skulls” as Basquiat’s “Untitled” sold in 2017 for $110.5 million, still a record for a work by the artist. Like that one, it is a good Basquiat, but not a masterpiece on the level of “Profit I” or the “Untitled” sold for $57 million in 2016. For reference, its pre-sale estimate was around $50 million.

Sandro Botticelli: Portrait of a Young Man holding a Roundel
Painted c.1480
Sold for $92.2 million at Sotheby’s New York, January 2021
Oh Botticelli. In the midst of this section dominated by modern and contemporary artists, the Florentine Renaissance is represented by this very beautiful work, described by the auction house as “a timeless masterpiece“. The $92.2 million makes it the most expensive old master painting ever sold by Sotheby’s (though logically a far cry from the $450 million “Salvator Mundi” attributed to Leonardo).

Mark Rothko: No. 7
Painted in 1951
Sold for $82.5 million at Sotheby’s New York, November 2021
The price paid was very close to the record price for a Rothko work at auction ($86.8 million at Christie’s 2012, although Rothko has achieved higher prices at private sales, like the one from the Bunny Mellon collection and a questionable acquisition by Dmitri Rybolovlev). “No. 7” was painted in 1951 -a very important year in Rothko’s career-, it came from a very respected collection, and last but not least, it is certainly a very attractive Rothko, whose color scheme is reminiscent of the “White Center” that broke all price records for the artist almost 15 years ago. A fair price for a very good Rothko.

Beeple (Mike Winkelmann): Everydays: the First 5000 Days
Minted in 2021
Sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s New York
As we said in the summary of the year at the beginning of this article, the sale of “Everydays” (despite not being the highest price paid for a work of art in 2021) can be considered the most important event related to the art market in recent years.

Sacha Jafri: The Journey of Humanity
Completed in 2020
Sold for $62 million at Humanity Inspired Royal Charity Auction, Dubai, March 2021
“The Journey of Humanity”, created over seven months, is considered to be the largest painting ever painted on canvas. Occupying an area of some 1,500 square meters, the work incorporates artwork created by some 140 children. The $62 million paid by investor Andre Abdoune is one of the highest prices ever paid for a work by a living artist, and the proceeds from its sale were donated by the artist to various children’s causes.

The successes

Images: Banksy: “Love is in the bin”, 2018. © Banksy ·· Flora Yukhnovich: I’ll Have What She’s Having, 2020. © Flora Yukhnovich

This section, in which we present several works that far exceeded their pre-sale expectations, is clearly dominated by contemporary art, with special mention for several NFTs (the year’s major protagonists), and several young artists who succeeded in the vibrant Hong Kong market.

Beeple (Mike Winkelmann): Everydays: the First 5000 Days
Minted in 2021
Sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s New York
Pre-sale estimate: officially “unknown”. Starting Bid: $100
Again? Yes, again. In addition to being one of the highest prices paid for a work of art in 2021, the 69.3 million paid for “Everydays” is also one of the biggest surprises, at least if we take into account the starting bid with which Christie’s opened the auction: $100. Although its estimated value was obviously higher, it is quite likely that this is the first time in the history of auctions that a work has reached a price 693,000 times higher (!) than its starting bid.

Larva Labs: CryptoPunk 7523
Minted in 2017
Sold for $11.75 million at Sotheby’s New York, June 2021
Pre-sale estimate: officially “unknown”. Starting Bid: $1.5 million
Yet another proof of the strength of the NFT market, and also proof that collectors are willing to pay huge sums of money for any work with a certain degree of exclusivity (“CryptoPunk 7523” is considered the first work minted on the Ethereum blockchain) even though its artistic value is -to say the very least- debatable.

Banksy: “Love is in the bin“
Completed (and partially destroyed) in 2018
Sold for £18.5 million ($25.4 million) at Sotheby’s London, October 2021
Pre-sale estimate of £4 to 6 million · Sold in 2018 for £1,042,000
The case of this now famous partially self-destructed work by Banksy is remarkable not so much for its increase over the pre-sale estimate, but for the fact that it sold for 18 times more than just 3 years ago, an increase due solely and exclusively to the rise in fame of this painting after its partial self-destruction.

Huang Yuxing: Seven Treasure Pines
Painted in 2016-2019
Sold for HK$64.8 million ($5.1 million) at Christie’s Hong Kong, December 2021
Pre-sale estimate of HK$2.8 to 3.8 million ($360,000 to $490,000)
The most notable of the many successes of Christie’s Hong Kong auction entitled “Worlds In A Hand,” in which, for example, “This Land so Rich in Beauty No. 2,” an extraordinary painting by Zeng Fanzhi, fetched HK$40 million, doubling its most optimistic pre-sale estimate.

Ronald Ventura Party animal
Painted in 2017
Sold for HK$19.45 million ($2,496,000) at Christie’s Hong Kong, May 2021
Pre-sale estimate of HK$800,000 to 1,200,000 ($102,000-154,000)
An excellent result for this Filipino artist, whose works are intended to represent, in the artist’s own words, “a new grotesque reality“.

Emily Mae Smith: Broom Life
Painted in 2014
Sold for HK$12.35 million ($1,584,999) at Phillips / Poly Auctions Hong Kong, June 2021
Pre-sale estimate of HK$400,000 to 600,000 ($51,300-76,900)
One of the greatest successes of the auctions organized jointly by Phillips and Poly in Hong Kong, this apparently cheerful and light-hearted painting proposes, in the words of Emily Mae Smith, a study about gendered connotations in art.

Flora Yukhnovich: I’ll Have What She’s Having
Painted in 2020
Sold for £2.25 million ($3 million) at Sotheby’s London, October 2021
Pre-sale estimate of £60,000 to £80,000 ($81,000 to $108,000)
Flora Yukhnovich can be considered one of the year’s big winners in the art market. Not only did this work manage to sell for 30 times (!) its most optimistic estimate, but, also in 2021, another work by the same artist, “Pretty Little Thing,” (2019) was auctioned for $1,179,500 at Phillips New York, with a pre-sale estimate of $60,000 to $80,000.

Beyond contemporary art, in the 2021 art auctions there were other results far above pre-sale expectations, which we present below. Special mention for the unpredictable antiques market, where factors such as provenance or state of conservation can cause a work to exceed all expectations, or, on the other hand, not to find a buyer.

Images: The Hamilton Aphrodite. Roma, 1st – 2nd Century A.D ·· Gustave Loiseau: L’hôtel de Mademoiselle Ernestine, Saint-Jouin (Finistère) ou Le verger de Mademoiselle Ernestine, Saint-Jouin, 1908

The Hamilton Aphrodite
Roman, 1st – 2nd Century A.D.
Sold for £18,582,000 ($24,510,000) at Sotheby’s London, December 2021
Pre-sale estimate of £2,000,000 to £3,000,000
The fact that Sotheby’s dedicated an exclusive auction to the work, together with the quality and extraordinary provenance of this sculpture (acquired in Italy during the 18th century), made one suspect that the estimate published by the auction house (between 2 and 3 million pounds) seemed rather conservative, and so it was: the sculpture was auctioned for £18.58 million (21.9 million euros), placing it as one of the most expensive antiquities ever sold.

A South Arabian Alabaster Figure of a Woman
3rd Century B.C./1st Century A.D.
Sold for £499,000 ($658,000) at Sotheby’s London, December 2021
Pre-sale estimate of £18,000 to £22,000
This beautiful and well preserved figure was not the only South Arabian artwork that exceeded its estimate at its auction. Two alabaster female heads sold for £277,200 and £126,000 (highest pre-sale estimate: £50,000 and £15,000), and a head of a man sold for £214,000 (10 times its highest estimate)

Three Amlash pottery figures
Early 1st millennium B.C.
Sold for £312,500, £162,500 and £137,500 at Christie’s London, July 2021
Pre-sale estimate between £7,000 and £15,000 each
Three very surprising successes, considering that none of these three statuettes seems to have a very trustworthy provenance (in the case of the one sold for £137,500, the online catalogue only indicated “acquired before 1980”).

Chinese school: A white marble figure of a lion
Undated (Tang Dynasty?)
Sold for $500,000 at Christie’s New York, September 2021
Pre-sale estimate of $7,000 to $10,000
Little information is available on this work, except that it came from the collection of Stephen Junkunc, who died in 1978, but the fact that it sold for 50 times its most optimistic pre-sale estimate places it as one of the biggest successes of the year.

China, Jin dynasty: Guanyin polychrome wood statue
Created 1115-1234
Sold for €2.9 million ($3.27 million) at Christie’s Paris, June 2021
Pre-sale estimate of €100,000 to €150,000 ($112,000 to $169,000)
Interestingly, another statue of Guanyin also sold at Christie’s Paris was one of the great successes of the market in 2016, when, carrying a pre-sale estimate of between €200,000 and €300,000, it was auctioned for €5.2 million.

An Ottoman quibla indicator
Dated AH 1151/1738 AD
Sold for £802,500 ($1,079,000) at Christie’s London, October 2021
Pre-sale estimate of £15,000 to £25,000 ($20,200 to $33,600)
According to Christie’s, this particular work was “signed by the master Barun al-Mukhtara, who created this genre of qibla indicators for the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Yegen Mehmet Pasha in the 1730s”

Michel Périnet’s collection of African and Oceanic art
Total result of the sale: €66.1 euros ($74.8 million). Pre-sale estimate: between €17 million and €23 million at Christie’s Paris, June 2021.
Including: a mask from the Caroline Islands sold for €9.2 million euros (record for a work of art from Oceania) against a pre-sale estimate of between €500,000 and €700,000, a Luba mask sold for €7.2 million against a pre-sale estimate of between €1.5 million and €2 million, and a Kota mask from Gabon sold for €3.26 million (8 times its most optimistic pre-sale estimate). Overall, the auction demonstrated the interest in high quality African and Oceanian art of recognized provenance.

Follower of Hans Holbein the younger: Portrait of Matthew Parker (1504-1575), Archbishop of Canterbury
Mid-late 16th century
Sold for £189,000 ($251,000) at Sotheby’s London, March 2021
Pre-sale estimate: £2,000 to £3,000
One of the many successes of Lady Mountbatten’s highly successful auction, in which, for example, a pig-shaped bag by Lacloche Frères fetched 35 times its most optimistic estimate, and a Qing dynasty jade teapot sold for £176,400, eighteen times its estimate.

Vincent van Gogh: Jeune homme au bleuet
Painted in 1890
Sold for $46,7 million at Christie’s New York, November 2021
Pre-sale estimate: $5 million to $7 million
Although another work by Van Gogh (“Cabanes de bois parmi les oliviers et cyprès“) achieved the highest price at the sale of the Cox Collection, this portrait -painted a few weeks before the artist’s suicide- was one of his greatest successes, selling for almost 7 times its most optimistic estimate. And we say “one of his greatest successes” because the title of “greatest success” will have to be disputed with the work included below.

Gustave Loiseau: L’hôtel de Mademoiselle Ernestine, Saint-Jouin (Finistère) ou Le verger de Mademoiselle Ernestine, Saint-Jouin
Painted in 1908
Sold for $774,000 at Christie’s New York, November 2021
Pre-sale estimate of $20,000 to $30,000
Although it is not a sale of the magnitude of the previous work by Van Gogh, this spectacular result (25 times its most optimistic pre-sale estimate), together with that of another work by Loiseau sold at the same auction for 13 times its most optimistic pre-sale estimate, could mean a turning point in the valuation of this second-generation impressionist artist.

Wang Guowei: Rubbing and Calligraphy
Executed c.1900-1920
Sold for HKD 3.75 million ($480,000) at Christie’s Hong Kong, May 2021
Pre-sale estimate of HKD 80,000 – HKD 120,000 ($10,300 to $15,400)
The market for Asian painting is, as we said about the one for Ancient Art, quite unpredictable, and this spectacular result was one of the great surprises of the year.

The bargains

In a year in which the contemporary art market continues to rise, we can find works from other periods that, despite the fact that from a historical or even artistic point of view are more important than virtually any contemporary artwork sold in 2021, have fallen far short of the prices achieved by artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Let’s start with a pair of paintings by the two masters of English Romantic painting: Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable.

Images: Joseph Mallord William Turner: Purfleet and the Essex Shore as seen from Long Reach ·· John Constable: Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds

Joseph Mallord William Turner: Purfleet and the Essex Shore as seen from Long Reach
Painted in 1808
Sold for £4.79 million ($6.4 million) at Sotheby’s London, July 2021
Turner is arguably the most important landscape painter of all time, and while “Purfleet and the Essex Shore as seen from Long Reach” is certainly not a masterpiece on a par with “The Fighting Temeraire” or “The Slave Ship“, it is a very good seascape by the British painter, comparable to “The Confluence of the Thames and the Medway“, now in the Tate Britain, and painted the same year as this work. It is also the only seascape by Turner to have come to auction in the last 15 years. In short, for a serious collector this painting should be considered one of the most desirable works of art that has come to auction this year, and the fact that it has been sold for a price three or four times lower than that of an “average” Basquiat or Richter is difficult to understand.

John Constable: Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds
Painted in 1822-1823
Unsold at Christie’s London, December 2021
Pre-sale estimate of £2 million to £3 million
“Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds” could be a good companion for the previous work by Turner, the other great protagonist of English Romantic painting. It is a large oil sketch (65.1 x 76.6 cm.) painted by John Constable for his large paintings of Salisbury Cathedral, his great achievement of the last phase of his career. The fact that it is a sketch does not detract from the interest of this excellent work, almost impressionistic in its agile brushwork and its effort to capture the atmospheric effects au plein air. Despite its conservative pre-sale estimate of £2-3 million, the work failed to find a buyer, meaning that it could very possibly have been acquired after the auction for a similar price to its more conservative pre-sale estimate.

Some of the surprisingly low prices are in the Old Masters painting market, caused both by doubts about the attribution of many of the paintings and by the generally low interest on the part of younger collectors. Two examples are included below:

Roman School: Eight Scenes from the Life of Christ
Painted c.1275-1300
Sold for $1.47 million at Christie’s Live Auction, April 2021
Works of this quality and period are extraordinarily rare to find on the market. This excellent set of scenes could be the first work (in chronological order) in any serious collection of European art.

Hugo van der Goes The descent from the cross
Painted c.1480
Sold for $3.35 million at Sotheby’s New York, January 2021
The studies and argumentation presented by Sotheby’s in the catalogue of this work are solid, which together with the high quality of the painting support the idea that the attribution to Van der Goes, although not unanimous, is quite convincing. With this in mind, the price paid seems extraordinarily low for a work by this artist, whose works very rarely appear on the art market. Actually, the only one to appear on the market in recent decades (besides a small portrait acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in 2009), an incomplete altarpiece attributed to the artist, was auctioned for $9 million in 2017. Considering that there are no paintings by Van Eyck or Van der Weyden in private hands, this work was a unique opportunity for any collector interested in early Flemish painting.

A similar situation to that of the old masters market occurs in the Ancient Art market, from which we select the following work as an example:

A Mesopotamian alabaster idol
Neolithic Period, c.5500 B.C.
Sold for $52,500 at Christie’s New York, October 2021
This little sculpture, found on the banks of the Tigris, is an interesting testimony to the protohistory of Mesopotamia, one of the cradles of civilization. Created almost three millennia before the famous “Guennol Lioness”, the figure had been sold in 2020 for £40,000 (5 times its highest pre-sale estimate).

Despite the strength of the modern art market, far from the multimillion dollar auctions it is still possible to find works of great interest at a very reasonable price, such as the example below:

František Kupka: Composition – Lueurs
Executed c.1911
Sold for £81,900 ($110,000) at Sotheby’s London, October 2021
The small size of this pastel does not detract from the strength or interest of this pure abstraction, painted in 1911, the same year as many of Kandinsky’s early masterpieces. It is a magnificent example of early European abstraction, painted by an artist whom the art market is beginning to recognize as one of the great masters of modern art: half a year earlier, Kupka’s “Le Jaillissement II (Tryskání II)” was auctioned for £7.5 million at Sotheby’s.

The disappointments

Images: Franz Kline: Mister. © Succession Franzk Kline / ARS New York ·· Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Guilt of Gold Teeth © Succession Jean-Michel Basquiat / ARS New York

Xu Beihong: Slave and Lion
Painted in 1924
Unsold at Christie’s Hong Kong, May 2021
Pre-sale estimate of HK$350 million to HK$450 million (US$45 million to US$57.7 million)
Described by Christie’s as “a milestone in the history of modern Chinese art”, the work was destined to be one of the blockbusters of the year, adding more fuel to Hong Kong’s already euphoric art market. The fact that it had been sold 15 years earlier for one-sixth of its most conservative estimate may not have helped its sale.

Franz Kline: Mister
Painted in 1959
Unsold at Sotheby’s New York, May 2021
Pre-sale estimate of $15 to 20 million
In the post-war art market, Franz Kline is an artist who has long been aiming to achieve prices similar to those of other abstract expressionists such as Cy Twombly or Clyfford Still (Rothko and Pollock seem unattainable). “Mister” is one of the artist’s best works to come on the market in recent years, and the fact that it failed to find a buyer was one of the year’s great disappointments.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Guilt of Gold Teeth
Painted in 1982
Sold for $40 million at Christie’s New York, November 2021
Pre-sale estimate of $40 to 80 million
After a year in which Basquiat had achieved spectacular prices (just look at the aforementioned “In this case” or “Warrior“), the $40 million paid in November for this work -a monumental Basquiat painted in his best year, 1982- was a small disappointment, coupled with the example we will see below.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: Made in Japan II
Painted in 1982
Unsold at Sotheby’s New York, November 2021
Pre-sale estimate of $12 to 18 million
It is quite possible that Sotheby’s was erring on the side of over-optimism with the valuation of this work, which is by no means a great Basquiat. Or perhaps it is, along with the example above, a victim of an oversupply of Basquiats on the market.

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